Wednesday December 18th… Dear Diary. The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: A Cooler Climate Helps To Protect The U.S. From Severe Outbreaks During Winter
Dear Diary. Two days ago we saw a deadly severe outbreak of storms across the southeastern United States. Climatologically the Southeast is the area of the country where we as meteorologist would expect a severe outbreak during December. Nevertheless, without a much warmer than average airmass in place over the Southeast over last weekend we would not have seen as many severe storms with embedded tornadoes as took place. This is meteorology 101 folks.
As the climate warms the frequency of warm air intrusions during the fall and winter will increase. These warm air intrusions will interact with residual cold air masses moving southward through the Plains and Midwest dynamically producing a recipe for severe storms. Basically, our falls and winters will become more like our traditional springs across the United States when severe weather is expected and dreaded.
Here are a few notes on this week’s severe outbreak across the South:
I will continue to monitor what occurs during the winter in association with severe outbreaks to let my readers know of trends. As noted yesterday the week before Christmas will turn very mild across most of the United States, so as the weather pattern inevitably turns colder later this winter there probably will be some severe weather along and ahead of a strong front. I’m dreading that weather transition for the sake of some citizens, which may be linked to our climate crisis.
Here is more climate and weather news from Wednesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article.)
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Guy Walton- “The Climate Guy”